Employee Wellness Innovations

Literature Review

Employee Wellness Programs

Employee wellness programs, also called worksite wellness programs or corporate wellness programs, are programs developed by companies to promote and support the health, safety, and well-being of their staff. The programs are designed to encourage healthier lifestyle behavior among their employees and reduce company healthcare spending in the long term. Traditional wellness programs usually include health-promotion activities, health-risk assessments, biometric screenings, worksite clinical care, wellness interventions, and occupational health services. The wellness perks usually include health conferences and classes, walking competitions, and healthy snacks for meetings and breaks. The rewards to motivate employees can include healthy food or drinks, pedometers, and stress balls. According to the Gallup-Sharecare Well-Being Index, employee programs should focus on these five aspects: purpose, social, financial, community, and physical. 

Table 1. Top Five Aspects of Job Satisfaction

• Note: a dash (-) indicates the question was not asked on that year's survey. Table represents the percentage of respondents who rated each aspect as very important to their job satisfaction. Percentages are based on a scale where 
• 1= very unimportant and 4=very important.

A study by Hochart and Lang showed that worksite wellness programs affected an employer's workplace culture and helped healthy employees stay at low risk of mental breakdown, while reducing risk levels for those at moderate or high risk. Another study showed that healthy and fit employees can control themselves better when they feel stressed and are more productive and engaged at work, which leads to higher productivity, higher sales, and higher profitability. Some scholars also stated that employee wellness can increase work engagement. Since wellness programs can improve physical and mental health, they indirectly persuade employees to work harder. Also, a healthy working environment can promote innovation, and excellent social aspects of the workplace can have positive effects on workplace engagement. According to a survey report about employee satisfaction, employee benefits have been among the five most important factors for job satisfaction every year since 2002, with the exception of 2012 (Table 1).

Note: n = 600. Importance percentages are based on a scale where 1 = very unimportant and 4 = very important. Satisfaction percentages are based on a scale were 1 = very dissatisfied and 5 = very satisfied. Data are sorted in descending order by the percentage of respondents who indicated very important.

Also, as Figure 1 shows, though most organizations offered paid holidays, only 58 percent offered a paid time-off (PTO) plan. Moreover, many organizations did not offer family-friendly benefits. The report showed that only 28 percent of companies offered an on-site mother's room, 10 percent offered a child care referral service, and 1 percent offered geriatric counseling. 

Engaged employees can transfer their happiness and positive emotions onto others. When employees are highly engaged, they tend to perform very well with customers, who will report favorable employee performance. As a result, these positive relationships will lead to customer loyalty. A study by Line and Runyan examined the relationship between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction in the hospitality industry, and how service operations are related to customer perceptions and behaviors. Their findings indicated that an engaged employee can make customers more satisfied and ultimately add financial profit to the company.

Uniqueness of Hospitality Workplaces

Hospitality industries are striving hard to achieve sustainability and success in a competitive market. It is important for hospitality organizations to do social good and to add that goodwill to the bottom line of their business. Unlike employees at high-tech companies, studies have shown that hospitality and service employees work in constantly changing work environments. Employee wellness plays an important role in their work performance. Hospitality employees provide service to various customers from different backgrounds and engage in teamwork with colleagues and supervisors from different departments. Also, they may experience unpredictable obstacles and be required to maintain a positive attitude with customers. Most positions in hotels often involve repetitive work, awkward posture, and standing for a relatively long time. For instance, hotel front desk employees have to stand at the front desk and keep looking down at computers during their eight-hour shifts. Employees participating in shift work are required to work against their natural circadian rhythm; as a result, their physiological and psychological health can be affected by such afflictions as disrupted sleep patterns, stomach trouble, and stress, while at the same time they must provide service to guests efficiently, courteously, and accurately.